Education is a unique field. I would say that education is a very unique field, but I am educated and, therefore, no better. The State of New York places a great deal of importance on education, especially if you intend on being an educator. To that end, the Powers That Be mandate that to be an educator, one must complete an accepted Master’s Degree program within five years of obtaining your Bachelor’s Degree. I don’t think that anyone believes this to be unreasonable. (At least, I don’t. And for the purposes of this editorial, that’s all that matters…ever.)
One could (read, should) assume that if you’ve completed a Bachelor’s Degree and have been accepted to an accredited Master’s Program, you have certain requisite skills, such as the ability to write a coherent sentence, conjugate verbs correctly, and spell. Alas, this is not always the case. In fact, with such pressures on teachers, it’s a little odd and more than a little surprising when one meets teacher’s aides. Now, before I launch into a tirade about teacher’s aides, I will say that many (if not most of them) are extremely talented and very helpful in a classroom. That being said, there are others who don’t deserve to talk to children, let alone teach them or (for Christ’s sake) have them. Here are but a few examples of things I have personally witnessed at my school. (The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Well, more my job than the innocent.)
Let’s discuss Mrs. Dean. I’m not sure of her first name, but I’m assuming it’s mostly consonants and improperly paired phonemic sounds. Mrs. Dean helps out in the 5th Grade Classroom…partially by taking up two seats due to her size and, therefore, decreasing class size. (That is to say, decreasing class size in the number of students not in the overall volume of people.) If a student misbehaves (and the planets are aligned properly) Mrs. Dean may intercede and correct that student’s behavior. Most often, she will intercede by saying something like this: “Yo…you best be knockin’ that crap off right now, ‘fore I get real mad. You ain’t be wantin’ to see me when I mad!” I think everyone in my building can agree, at least with the first part. “We ain’t be wantin’ to see her…” At the end of a particular day, I had brought the 5th Grade down the hall to meet their teacher and Mrs. Dean. As we were waiting for the teacher, Mrs. Dean came down the hall, dancing (more accurately, undulating) and declaring, “Yo…Mrs. Dean be going to a strip club after work! WOOO!!” As I looked on, in obvious shock, she laughed at my reaction, saying, “Don’t worry, my kids know what I’m about!” And then she laughed, a hearty, jolly, morbidly obese laugh.
We certainly can’t forget about Ms. Adams who, at the tender age of 22, has three children in our elementary school. As Mom is always around, her children tend to think twice about misbehaving…and then misbehave anyway. But it’s all right, as we excuse most (all) of their misdeeds because “their mother is always around to deal with the problem.” I’m not even sure what that means. The Principal said it though, so it doesn’t matter. At least, that’s what I’m told.
Instruction Support staff require an Associate’s Degree. First year teachers require a Bachelor’s Degree. Tenured teachers either have or are in the process of getting a Master’s Degree. In my Master’s Degree program, there is a student by the name of Alison Grace. Remember this name well (even though it isn’t her real name), because you will undoubtedly hear about her in the years to come, probably in a headline such as, “NFL Cheerleader Part of Player Prostitution Ring!” Alison is working towards being an NFL Cheerleader. Clearly, the Master’s Degree is fodder for some upcoming Beauty Pageant. But Cheerleading is a profession where one must be very attractive, smile broadly, and preferably say very little. I’m assuming Alison meets the first two criteria (it’s an online class, so I’ve never actually seen her) but she fails spectacularly at the last point. In fact, when she makes a comment in our classroom forums, I gather together my housemates so they may be entertained by her ramblings. And that’s what they are, even in the most generous way. Another classmate wrote something relating to the attention spans of younger students. In her reply, Alison, evidently relying on her memory (which was a mistake) changed attention spans to “tenting spans.” The breadth of one’s tent is an important issue; that goes without saying. Perhaps that conversation was better left to another time, however.
I thought that I would include some of her postings so you could fully appreciate her writing style…such as it is. Part of our responsibility in class is to post at least three times per day for four days, excluding the posts made in the course of our normal class assignments. For these responses, the criterion states that we must post, at least, 200 words. The syllabus specifically says, “Answers of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ‘I agree’ or ‘I disagree’ are not acceptable. Answers must be substantive.” The fault then becomes that of the teacher because it will become clear to you that Alison could never possibly understand the word “substantive.” Therefore, I have only included the original question followed by Alison’s post. My commentary follows each item:
Here is her biography, just so we can all be on the same page…
“Greetings Everyone! My name is Alison Grace. I just turn 24 on the 16th of last month (yea!), so there’s not much that I can say about me that I’ve already done professionally. I have no children (thank goodness!). I am from Rockingham, North Carolina, I moved to Atlanta, Georgia in mid of 2002, to attend College at American InterContinental University to pursue my BFA in Fine Arts/Computers, and now I want to take things farther and get my Masters in Education to become a Director of Education or President of Fine Arts for a School. I also want to some day open up my own school in a couple of years. I am currently a Computer teacher for Pre-K and Kindergartens. I love being on the Computers of course doing Graphic Design or just exploring. I love to dance (jazz, modern and a little hip hop), I am currently dancing for a professional Basketball team in Georgia and hopefully grow to become an NFL Cheerleader next year. I enjoy eating all kinds of shrimp and crab legs and as well as loving to carrying conversion with people that I may not know, because you never know who you just talked too. I am very excited about pursuing my Masters as well as getting knowledge in Education.”
I remember reading this and thinking, “Obviously she means ‘further’ instead of ‘farther.’ But I’m being somewhat unreasonable…that’s an easy mistake to make!” Oh, how I underestimated her… I mean, she some interesting phrasing, but I didn’t think too much about it. That obvious lack of commas was hardly a blip on my radar. But then? Then I read this:
What are examples of some problems that educators might study, using an action research model?
“Two examples that I see that could be a study would be communication and listening. Being a teacher for only 2 years now, I see so much lack of communication between a student and teacher. For example, in my class of course, every now a then pushing and hitting accurse. So one of the students (John) brought in a transformer toy one day and doing recess time he laid it down where it could be reachable to other students. It just so happens another student (Chris) saw and picked it up and started playing with it and John saw him with it. Instead of John coming to me and letting me know, he decides to put matters in his own hands. John snatches the Transformer out of Chris’s hand and yells “This is my toy”.
Another example would be “Listening”. Oh my goodness, the world would be so much nicer if listening was not an issue. I think just about every day (Monday – Friday), I am telling a least two students to quit putting a toy or a stick from Legos out of their mouths. So me thinking talking them off the Legos or toys and putting them on markers and coloring books it wouldn’t be a problem. So I thought.”
Regardless of the fact that neither communication nor listening is a problem, her response is barely English. Seriously, “…in my class of course, every now a then pushing and shoving accurse?” Does she mean that, “Of course there is pushing and shoving in my class!” or perhaps, “In my class (that is to say, obviously in my class, as I am giving a specific example and how would I know what goes on in someone else’s class)…” And regarding the aforementioned pushing and shoving, is it cursed? Did a warlock or something doom all who pushed and shoved to some eternal damnation? Do students spout expletives while pushing and shoving? And speaking of pushing and shoving…I would be all right with her typing “an” or “ad” or “nd.” Missing a single letter in a word is totally reasonable. Missing two? And what about grammar and spell check? At best, her word processor should have told her that it was a sentence fragment. Mine did, anyway.
Remember substantive responses? Here is a response I wrote:
What are examples of some problems that educators might study using an action research model?
“Perhaps the most common issue that educators face is the behavior of students. In my own career, I have encountered students who’s behavior was so odd (either in the severity of their disrespect or in the idiosyncratic behavior) that I have approached the school psychologist or administration or sometimes both. In these cases, it became clear that significant issues in the child’s home life largely contributed to their attitudes and behaviors in class. Can I say this with absolute certainty? No, as I’ve not done research to lead me to these conclusions. However, common sense would imply that these causes and effects are correlated. But assuming this is true, the implication is that events outside of school building can have a significant effect on performance in school. Therefore, what other events can affect performance? As teachers, we are limited in what we can do relating to a child’s home life. However, we should strive to provide the healthiest and most consistent environment that we can. As such, what factors do we, as teachers and members of a school community have control over? What can we change? How will the aforementioned change affect the child socially, academically, emotionally? Is it within the rights of a teacher (arguably a surrogate parent for six to eight hours a day) to attempt to affect any sort of change in a child’s life other than through the normal dissemination of knowledge?”
And here is the infamous camping response:
“Yes. The behavior of students is a big issue for me, because if a studnet’s has bad behavior, it puts the tenting span off the ones that are behavior well.”
Notice the empty response? The misspelled word with the incorrectly placed possessive “s?” The creation of a something called a “tenting span” quickly followed by an improper use of the word “behavior?” I suppose it could have been worse. She could have said, “…the ones that behavior good.” I quite possibly would have exploded.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that I copied and pasted her forums posts exactly. I only changed stuff so as to conceal her identity. Because, let’s face it, if you met her on the street, wouldn’t you want to put her out of her misery? On second thought, she may like miseries. They could be her favorite genre of books.
December 22, 2007. Mike "Dickie" McCord. No Comments.
So I work with a guy that has a Marlboro Jacket. I’ve seen several like them as well as other smoking peripha… peraphi… stuff that other people have. I asked a guy once where he got these accessories and told me that the company just sent them to him. I said “Wow, that’s pretty expensive for a lighter”. With a confused look on his face, he asked what I meant. My reply was as follow: “YOU DUMBASS! I mean your friggin’ lungs and overall personal health. You spend more than $1000 a year on cigarettes that contain what amounts to slightly less then a lead-acid battery. For this Devi’s deal, they send you a jacket and a shiny lighter and with an ignorant smile you say “OK 
”. He replied “How’s that cheeseburger?” Shut your face.
December 1, 2007. Pat "GingaBread" Paulson. No Comments.
What is the Blue Mile Podcast?
We've often wondered the same thing. We're pretty sure that we're a sketch comedy troupe from Upstate New York and New England. We'd tell you more, but your question has sent us into an existential crisis. Thanks a lot.
